Goodbye to a Student Teacher

He gave them five minutes to write
and wrote for that time too, so I know
that he had learned something from me.
And I bent to write along with them
sitting at a table with the students
looking at him on his last day.
I wrote:

As with all endings
I’m left with questions
while the answers go
out with you.
I suppose we both know
the answers anyway and
so I smile as you walk
out the door,
around the corner and
over the horizon
disappearing out of sight
still in our minds.
We all did what was done
and everything else
all those other things
are vapors.
They weren’t meant to be
and are less substantive,
far less so, than memory.
And so fare well.

Time’s up, he says.
Put your pens down.
And the ink dries into the paper
as we look one last time
and listen to how you
will tell us goodbye.

(c) 2006 bgfay

Writing to Billy Collins to Request a Scrap of His Writing

I wouldn’t sell it on eBay.
I would write that on the front of it
next to the ink you had put down
thereby destroying the resale value.

I would show it to my students
and I would wear a look of wonder
as I told them who had sent it to me
all the while hoping they wouldn’t yawn.

I would keep it by my side
as I wrote my own words and struggled
to make the written word echo
the odd thoughts inside my head.

And staring at the scrap of your writing
the scrap of an idea for a poem
or maybe just an old shopping list,
all the necessities of life,

I would feel for sure that I was speaking with you
that my writing and your own weren’t so far apart.

I would listen to the sound of my voice on the page
the way I have heard your voice on all your pages,
listening intently for the sound of something soft,
something that might possibly be true.

(c) 2006 bgfay

Mr. Bush, meet Mr. Jefferson

Today, in the East Room of the White House
Mr. Bush signed a bill that is said to
Allow for the prosecution of terrorists.
It also rolls back the rights of habeus corpus,
and allows for gossip and hidden evidence
to be used as primary tools of prosecution.

Mr. Bush’s spokesman, responding to worries
that such powers might be misused said that
"The only way accountability doesn’t exist
is if you believe that the military is not committed to it,"
As if efforts hadn’t been made to take such decisions
out of the hands of those whose duty it is to carry weapons.

Mr. Bush, meet Mr. Jefferson who once wrote,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Just before he helped dissolve a government.

To be fair, Mr. Jefferson had a way with words
the way that you, Mr. Bush, have with clearing brush.
And by definition Mr. Jefferson was a terrorist
where you are in a war (without end or bounds) with them.
So maybe you shouldn’t have dinner or take in a game together,
but, Mr. Bush, you ought to meet the guy once.

And barring that, you really should read a few things
he wrote down on parchment sealed in glass cases
in museums throughout the city in which you reside.

Simple Pleasure

Standing on the porch
waiting on nothing at all.
The sun is rising.

From out the green mug
rises coffee’s siren scent
The god’s own nectar.

And from inside, the
beloved footsteps approach
A second sunrise.

I’m a bird today
flying high above this world
Never coming down.

(c) 2006 bgfay for One Deep Breath

Goodnight Mr. Reagan

They’ve turned out all your lights, Mr. Reagan
And stolen the spare change you had been saving.
No, it wasn’t some burglar, a stockinged face in the night.
It was your family, your cousins and uncles,
the granddaughter you never knew, and crazy cousin Ann.
I’m sorry Mr. Reagan, and that doesn’t come easy.
You and I weren’t close, I’ve never liked puppet shows,
but still there’s a code of conduct in these things.
When we do bad things, we do them in our names alone,
and we leave who you were to who you were.
These guys though, they took an endless vacation
a holiday in Baghdad after a lost weekend in Kabul.
They trashed the place, upset the locals, and just won’t leave.
And that’s just the beginning, Mr. Reagan.
But you look tired, sir.

“It’s because I’m dead, son.”

So you are. Don’t look up sir, they’re up above you,
George and Donald, Condi and Big Dick
all of them with their pants down and giggling
as they piss all over the green grass, the brown worms,
the dark earth that covers over you in your deep sleep.

(c) 2006 bgfay for Poetry Thursday

The Countryside

Here on the edges
of where city meets the farm
the rooster calls me

Out to the pumpkins
into the apple orchard
where bounty beckons

The air there is food
succulent and fulfilling
but here comes the moon

Back to the edges
of where farm meets the city
alarm clocks ringing.

(c) 2006 bgfay
for One Deep Breath

My wife doesn’t want me to buy another iPod now

(This is a copy of a message I sent to Apple and the Better Business Bureau. If anyone knows anywhere else I should send it in order to get some assistance, please post a comment.)

I didn’t know where else to send this so I sent it here. If this isn’t the right place, please let me know where I should send it. Thank you.

My iPod Mini (4GB) died three months after I bought it. I brought it in to my local Apple store and they replaced it with another Mini. Seven months after that, another problem (this time with the battery) occurred. I was told to buy an external power adapter to solve the problem and that seemed to work though I had hoped to just charge the thing with my computer. Oh well. Then, literally one day after the warranty ran out, the unit began locking up, skipping, and having all sorts of problems transferring music. Bad sectors on the hard drive. Bummer. I brought it into my Apple store (Carousel Center, Syracuse, NY) and they tried their best to fix it, but it’s dead.

Here’s my problem: I want an iPod but my wife sees no reason for us to spend another $200 on an Apple product when our $200 last time bought us more trouble and less satisfaction than we ever could have imagined. So, for the moment, I’m stuck without an iPod, with a wife who is looking at every other MP3 player on the market, and profound disappointment with a product that worked for less than 365 days.

So what do I do? And what can you do? I would very much like to know. And so would my wife.

Thank you.